Francis Bacon 4 Idols

Francis Bacon describes four kinds of idols.

The first kind of idol is idols of the tribe. Idol of the tribe is the biases that humans have when it comes to unfamiliar situations. People jump to conclusions based on their feelings and experiences instead of taking time and trying to analyze the situation to see what is true and what false. People just do not take the time to see the truth in situations that are complicated to understand. They just go with their bias and their feelings because they are just to lazy to take the time to actually understand situations.

The second kind of idol is idols of the cave. Idols of the cave is creating individual biases through an educational system. The cave symbolizes the mind just like the allegory and the cave when the people try to brainwash you to think and act how they want you to. Just like educators because at school each teacher tries to teach you the things that they want you to learn and if this subject interests you then your brain molds and thinks all about that particular subject and it affects how you approach certain situations. Like a mathematician will see the solution of a problem in forms of math and numbers. And if the church teaches a kid all about God he will probably approach a situation in a religious way. What you learn creates bias.

The third kind of idol is idols of the marketplace. Idols of the marketplace is when the language to share information is more concerned in winning an argument rather than saying the truth. They use all of these fancy words and win the argument but even though they win it does not mean that what they argued was true. And some people might take that since the person won the argument what they say must be true.

The fourth kind of idol is idols of the theater. Idol of the theater is when like an institution uses false kind of philosophy. Like the church only used 4-5 Greek philosophers and related it to religion and then neglected any other form of understanding of the world. And if someone would go against this they would be killed.